Messages

Went to the T again with my daughter today. Ive had her sleeping in a little room near my bedroom for months as she is more comfortable there than in her room. Partly because she is close to me and today we worked out partly because she gets body memories from her bedroom. We still live in the same house the abuse to us occured in. For me it was a challenge to keep my house, it wad mine before I met him,I also dont want to loose the support I have with fantastic neighbors. So here is my  delema, I really dont want to move, but I also want to get my daughter sleeping back in her or the spare room but  both have body memories. I cant have visitors once she goes to bed when she sleeps where she is as shes right next to the front door. Very isolating for me. Ive cancelled visitors for 5 months now. So how do i help her process the body memories?   Is there a way? The T is working with her to process her memories and work with her as she goes through developmental stages she missed, but this bit of the whole seems to be missing. Looks like I need to start searching for ideas!

I relate to the feeling of going somewhere but not knowing where, sort of floating. I dont get the feeling now but did quite a few times to escape unpleasant things in the past. Id kind of just go, then decide to come back to see if it was safe, if it was id stay if it wasnt id go again. It was a peaceful place. In T I feel a bit vague and find once I walk out I have trouble remembering much of what was discussed. Id just thought it was my poor memory but I guess im still leaving to a degree. Lol more to work on! Seriously though it is just fantastic reading all your experiences. Thankyou.

Hello Lonewolf, I agree with Cat, since ive been working through the posts on this site and every other scrap of info I can find on cptsd ive also been finding the emotional roller coaster has started up again. My T thinks the learning and reading is good, I had worried it was doing more harm. But I now think its doing me good, the 'stuff' has to be dealt with. Keep looking after yourself and keep reading at a pace you can cope with. Hang in there! Maybe I should take my own advice too, Lol.

Im still trying to sort out flashbacks. I get a racing heartbeat, get short of breath and talk quickly and sometimes shake. I sometimes get palpations too. I also need to do, do, do. Jobs, errands anything. I need to feel like im achieving something. Is this a flashback, or just a panic attack? I also feel the walls go up as I try and shore myself up emotionally. I get emotionally distant. Recently ive had lots of the previous but also seperately an ache all over with shortness of breath. Ive linked this back to how I felt during the abuse while pregnant. I even ended up sleeping on the floor again, just couldnt seem to get myself into the bed. I used to sleep on the floor during my marriage, especially when pregnant and when my daughter was young. Most of the symptoms above I had while I was married. So Im guessing having them now years later makes them flashbacks?

Another week, another loop on the roller coaster. If its not me its my daughter. My mum called me the other night and just dropped into the conversation how shes been talking to her co-workers at the hospital(shes in admin) and some of them have childhood trauma and each of them said psychologists are no good, and psychiatrists dont help either. I think they have different names in the USA. I got really angry. I couldnt stop crying. My daughter crys for hours every night. I am on my own, i dont do shared care, its just me. Shes threatening self harm. I function on the surface, work, have a house, etc but dont cope inside. These people, mum included are so quick to judge but never willing to offer solutions. How dare they? I think its chats like this that reinforce to me how misunderstood I am, how those who dont live with the hurt just dont understand me. Thank goodness for this forum where people do understand.. Im trying to unravel why I was so upset. I think she was out of order, but she really hit a nerve. More soul searching needed. I think it will be a long night! If I can find the triggers she hit then hopefully i can diffuse the emotion so I dont need to pull away from my family.

Thanks both for the comments, a bad T can certainly cause  heart ache. It can follow you too, my current T knows that paying for both my, and my daughters sessions is really hard. She found a T for me who bulk bills which means she gets a subsidy to see clients but I was too scared to change.

On the positive ive been reading lots of posts on here and reflecting on what people have said and how it might relate to me. Something that really struck a chord is there is no need to rush- slow down! I fill my days, easy to do as a working single mum but any 'down time' I automatically fill with errands or jobs that could wait. A good way of trying to feel like ive achieved something and avoid thinking. Ive deliberately slowed down. Im trying to walk just a bit slower too, rather than racing about. A small thing maybe but I do feel a bit more relaxed. Im still home from work recuperating from pnemonia so im making use of the time to do 'nothing'.

Im hoping my calm state will transfer to my D, shes actually had two nights this week without sobbing with the night triggers and anxiety which is good. Although we've worked out that the tears are her starting to heal, triggered by body memories at sunset the tears every night are tiring and hard on both of us. Hopefully if she calms a bit more we will both get to catch up on some much needed sleep.

In my session my T and I worked out that althought my parents loved me and did their best in some ways it was emotionally neglected. They would be horrified. In other ways they were, and are there for me but not really on an emotional level. It explaines some of my more recent choices. It also explains why they dont seem able to support myD or myself now when weve been so alone battling both our demons. I dont think they actually know how, from their upbringings. I now have a chance to change the pattern, especially  as my D is doing so much regression while she catches up on developmental stages it wasnt safe to do at the normal time due to her abusive father.

I had an appointment  with my T today, for me not my daughter. As usual half the session was discussing her, our cptsd is so tangled. I normally go in with questions from my reading on cptsd, today was no different. It was can I get started now? Ive read that the stages for healing from cptsd are safety, then stabilisation, next working the trauma via cbt or similar. I have to say my experience with cbt was not good, so I had been dreading that starting. How do you focus on one traumatic event when there are hundreds, all linked in? It sent me on a tail spin with a previous therapist. My current one just looked at me and said you have started! I wads suprised. She doesnt think that for very complex trauma cbt is appropriate, thank goodness! Apparently all my quiet reflection, and slowly working out why my panic attacks trigger, or my need to stand with a wall behind me for protection etc etc is healing! wow. I thought maybe all my researching, reading on cptsd, tauma etc may have been another way to punish and wallow in self pity. (helpful accusations from my previous T). Now I feel like I can see a path forward, for both my daughter and I. Sort through the tangle of feelings so I can understand my mind and body. The link or association to smells, places music etc will always be there as its now wired but with understanding it can be managed or controlled. what a relief. Im starting to get better at linking my daughters and my emotional etc responces back to what happened in the past. The more I unravel, the easier it seems to be. Not saying I have it solved, I have a long, long way to go. Gee I still feel no anger to the perpetrator. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Hello Stillwaters, I too am new here, I have found it to be a very welcoming place to visit. The forum is a great way to learn and feel connected to people who understand. I look forward to sharing with you.

Oh Cvictor, so much of what you have written about where you are now could be written about me! I am so so sorry for your past. Nobody deserves to have the trust of family broken like that, or to be hurt by trusted partners. My path to where I am has been different to you but maybe knowing I feel myself much of what you describe may help you feel you are not alone. As schrodingers cat said we are all different so some of what i write may not fit for you.
Having said that I relate to the feelings, or lack of that you describe. I often wonder why I thought yesterday I had cptsd, nothing much happened to me, did it? Then little memories come back, for me the term flashback doesnt seem right. They are more like a very distant, faint memory, almost like its of someone else. There is very little emotion at all and no anger. I know I must be angry, my narc husband has hurt not only me but my daughter. Ive come to conclude that the feelings which had to be hidden to survive are so well wrapped up inside that they almost feel like a hole inside. A while back sadness started to bubble up, I often cried with no knowledge of why. Im guessing it was my body purging some of the emotion. I think to feel my anger, to let it out I need to find a way to feel that I can shut it down again. In short, im scared of how intense I expect it to be. I wonder if on some level it is the same for you?
You also talk of how people dont understand why you stayed. I too have had that thrown at me. Ive found that hard. I try and remember a couple of things. You did the best you could at the time. I had walls trapping me, not only from my narc husband but also wrong legal advice around child protection. I stayed to protect her, it might have been wrong but was right with the information I had. Lastly I try to be grateful that they dont get it, as it means they've not lived it.
Hang in there.

Oh Cvictor, so much of what you have written about where you are now could be written about me! I am so so sorry for your past. Nobody deserves to have the trust of family broken like that, or to be hurt by trusted partners. My path to where I am has been different to you but maybe knowing I feel myself much of what you describe may help you feel you are not alone. As schrodingers cat said we are all different so some of what i write may not fit for you.
Having said that I relate to the feelings, or lack of that you describe. I often wonder why I thought yesterday I had cptsd, nothing much happened to me, did it? Then little memories come back, for me the term flashback doesnt seem right. They are more like a very distant, faint memory, almost like its of someone else. There is very little emotion at all and no anger. I know I must be angry, my narc husband has hurt not only me but my daughter. Ive come to conclude that the feelings which had to be hidden to survive are so well wrapped up inside that they almost feel like a hole inside. A while back sadness started to bubble up, I often cried with no knowledge of why. Im guessing it was my body purging some of the emotion. I think to feel my anger, to let it out I need to find a way to feel that I can shut it down again. In short, im scared of how intense I expect it to be.
You also talk of how people dont understand why you stayed. I too have had that thrown at me. Ive found that hard. I try and remember a couple of things, you do the best you can at the time, my narc and for me wrong legal advice had me in a position where I was trapped with invisible walls stronger than steel

Hi all, I cant believe how kind everyone is! Unfortunately ive been unwell, just a normal, flu so not been on line. Amazing what stress does to your body.
C I share the difficulty of being a single mum. How old is your child/ren? Is it ok to ask that?
I had what seems like a breakthrough yesterday. My daughter had moved from months of tummy aches to nightly floods of tears, well it seems she is making progress and starting to heal. Not nice for either of us but so nice to understand whats going on. Im so lucky to have finally found a psych who really understands cptsd. The damage a narc father leaves behind is so tragic. It is certainly quite a journey we are all on.

Thankyou for all your kind and welcoming messages. It is so nice to find some people who might understand me. I so want to get better. My daughter is a massive motivation but I also want to understand my journey and learn from it so I can help others by educating doctors and police about other forms of abuse which dont fit the domestic violence mould. At the moment though I'm finding it all very confusing. I thought id got better, I rarely thought of the abuse and thanks to some meds from the gp the panic attacks had stopped. But my daughter is struggling with sleep issues, thanks to c-ptsd so I guess my buttons are being pushed. I seem to have crumpled into a heap. I think now all I had done was bury it all so I can keep my job and be mum and dad to my daughter. Now I'm learning that my dads lack of emotional support due to his bad childhood may be the real beginning of my story rather than marrying a psychpath. Its rocked me to the core. I love my dad and I cant believe he would mean to hurt me. But now I can see my trying to please the psychopath, at least in the early years was like me trying to please my father. I'm hoping the psych will be able to help. I feel like if I allow myself to feel the hurt and sadness that I am wasting my life now when I should make the most of the freedom and safety I now have. I feel that by being sad somehow the psychopath is still winning even though hes moved on. But can I ever really be happy without somehow reconciling what he did to me, and worse to my daughter?

hello, ive just discovered your site. both my daughter, age 11 and I have c ptsd. Today her psych described to me that what we lived through was called entrapment from my then husband. It was quite a shock but in some ways made me feel better. I so easily shut all of it away so I can still raise my daughter, work to provide for her, support her through her ptsd and put on a brave face that often I dont remember much of the abuse, but it always bubbles back. It lasted for 8 years. We are safe now, although there are still custody access worries for me as I dont have enough evidence to prevent access if it goes to court. I am still very isolated as I am a single mum with a very small support group. I often feel so alone and misunderstood its nice to find a site where people seem to get it.